Sometimes I wonder what if Cinderella didn't lose her glass slipper? Could her prince charming still find her?
Well, enough of fairy tales, let's get back to the real world. Not all of us are party goers and not all of us wear shoes, simply because not all of us own a pair of shoes.
The first time I saw my father wearing his pair of blue shoes was on an old, blurry laminated picture hanging on our wall; my mother said it was taken a long time ago. I never cared enough about it because I was just a little girl then who loved to play and wear my mother’s shoes. It was March 1999 when I saw those shoes again while my mother was cleaning them. What was the occasion? It was my older sister's elementary school graduation. But my father did not end up wearing them because my parents decided that my mother would be the one to pin the ribbon on my sister as the graduation was not held on the school stage due to frequent raining.
After that, I never saw my father’s blue shoes cleaned again. They were just kept in a dirty corner of our bamboo shoe rack, waiting to be used again. Again would be many years later when I found my sister cleaning them for her high school graduation in 2003.
Not long after, I found myself cleaning my father's blue shoes for my elementary school graduation in 2004. My father proudly wore them as he went up to the stage to pin ribbons on me.
Time passed and the blue shoes never had a chance to be cleaned or used again. They were left to collect dust and bugs. Three years had passed and my father's blue shoes were shined once again so he could march with my older sister at her college graduation. It was at that time that my father said his shoes had a sentimental value.
After a year, my father's blue shoes were washed again for my high school graduation. Unfortunately, he decided at the last minute not to wear them because he believed that they didn’t look good with his clothes so he wore my sister's rubber shoes which I also wore during my P.E. class.
In July 2008, I saw my father’s shoes being cleaned once again; it was my older sister's wedding. My father was going to wear them that day but some of my relatives said it wouldn’t look right with Barong Tagalog. They said he must wear black, formal shoes, which my father never had since he got married to my mother. My father didn’t want to buy new shoes because he thought it was not economical to buy something that you are just going to wear once. Fortunately, one of my aunts was kind enough to lend us my older cousin’s black, formal shoes as he happened to be in Manila and couldn’t attend the wedding. Unfortunately, the shoes were too big for my father's feet.
A few days before the wedding and before my future brother in-law arrived, my mother and my sister found a shoe store in Manila with a big sale, so they bought my father his first pair of formal shoes.
Just yesterday, after a year and a half, I found myself cleaning my father’s blue shoes. Was it my college graduation yet? Nope, that’s two years from now as long as my father can still hold a hammer in his hands as he is a freelance carpenter. So why I am cleaning them? Because I want the world to see and to know the story behind my father’s blue shoes, that were bought on 1985. Two decades old shoes that serve a special purpose; a pair of shoes that have survived dust and bugs; a pair of shoes which are just cleaned occasionally.
